| “Thy love shall chant its own beatitudes After its own life working... A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich; A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong; Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense Of service which thou renderest.” —Elizabeth Barrett Browning. |
Late afternoon of the fourth day after leaving Mount Vernon found the little party drawing near to the lowland city of Williamsburg. The road had no other travelers than themselves. There were no more thick woods, the road running in a blaze of sunshine past clumps of cedars, and wayside tangles of blackberry, sumac and elder bushes.
Presently the spires of churches and the roofs of several large buildings came into sight, clustered in one small spot, as it seemed to Peggy, until they entered the town itself, when they receded to their proper distances. The maiden leaned forward eagerly to see the place, for she had heard much of its gayety and fashion.
One broad unpaved street was the main thoroughfare of the town. It was very straight, shaded by mulberry and poplar trees, and ran for a measured mile from the Capitol at one end to the goodly college of William and Mary at the other. Houses, vine-clad, with wide porticoes and large gardens, bordered it, and two or three narrower streets debouched from it.
“This is the Duke of Gloucester Street, my dear,” explained Nurse Johnson as they entered the broad thoroughfare. “Yonder lies the Capitol where the courts convene. Once it was the center of all the legislation of the state, but all that is past since the capital hath been removed to Richmond.”
“Hath it?” exclaimed Peggy in surprise. “I did not know it. When was it, friend nurse?”
“’Twas done two years ago,” responded the nurse sadly. “Williamsburg was deemed too accessible to the enemy, so the government was removed to Richmond. I doubt not that we should be thankful, since the British did march for the capital in their late invasion of the state. The worst feature of the matter is that the traitor, Arnold, led the force that sacked and burned Richmond in January. No doubt ’twould have been our fate had the government still been here. Look well at the college, Peggy. It hath sent forth many of the men who are of prominence in the nation.”
Peggy regarded the college with great interest, for its fame was far spread, as it was the second university to be founded in the New World, Harvard being the first.
On the right of the large campus was the president’s house, built of brick alternately dull red and gray, brought over from England. Opposite was another building of like proportions and architecture known as the Brafferton School, built and endowed as an Indian seminary, a modest antitype of Hampton.
Although there were a number of shops and ordinaries, as the taverns were called, the town was thinly peopled, and Peggy was conscious of a chill of disappointment. Where was the glitter and glamour of pageantry of which she had heard so much?